Devotional Messages

DEVOTIONAL MESSAGE

John 20:13-14 – Then Jesus cried again with a loud voice and breathed his last.  At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom.  (NRSV)

The story of Jesus’ passion is full of symbolism and dramatic imagery, including this moment when the curtain of the temple is torn in two.  It’s like the falling of the final veil, the last thing separating us from God.  What was begun when the Word became flesh is now complete in God taking on death itself; it’s God’s ultimate solidarity with our human condition.

All along, in the story, the people around Jesus expect God to be like a super hero, suddenly saving the day with supernatural powers.  ‘If you’re God, then save yourself!  Come down from the cross!  Heal your cuts and wounds!’  But instead, we have a God who steadfastly stays with us in our human form, even unto the point of death.  And in God’s dying, the final barrier between us is torn apart.

For a moment, we no longer see through a mirror dimly, as Paul put it, but see face to face.  Or to paraphrase from later verses in First Corinthians, ‘when this immortal body put on mortality, and this imperishable body put on perishability’ then death was swallowed up in victory.  The final veil of separation falls, not because we have achieved enlightenment, but because God has come as close to us as our breath and breathed his last.

This is the testimony of Good Friday: that there is no part of our human experience in which God is not present.  No suffering, no shame, no fear, no pain, not even the moments when our life is fading, are empty of God’s presence.  The curtains we put up to shield ourselves from God’s glory are insubstantial in relation to the steadfastness of God’s love.  The veils that seem to keep us from God are torn down.  It is in death that God’s solidarity with us is most pronounced.  This is not a death for us, but a death with us, alongside us.

And so this day, even as we sit with the terror and pain of that death, let us also give thanks.  Let us embrace the tearing of the veil.  Let us name the things in our own lives that keep us from God, whether they are curtains within our own minds or barriers others have tried to enforce.

Think about what it is that seems to separate you from God.  What is it that you hesitate to bring before God, to ask God’s help with, to dare knock down so you can live in God’s light more fully?  Imagine those things as that veil.  And then envision that veil being torn to pieces by the power of God’s steadfast love.